An upright human figure would draw at once a hail of bullets.
Several machine guns still purred and crackled, but no reply came.
Presently they, too, ceased, and the silence in front was complete, save for the faint groans and the swish of the drifting snow.

John shivered, and it was not with cold.

His feeling of horror was increasing.

Many men had been killed and as many maimed, and he was sure that all of them had fallen for nothing.
"It's a victory," said Carstairs, "isolated and detached, but a victory nevertheless." "So it is," said John, "but it's just a little segment on a vast curving line of four hundred miles.

Maybe the Germans have taken a trench somewhere else." "And maybe we have, at yet another point.